Big Film Fest – May 2018: C’est la vie!

Apr 17, 2018

This effervescent comedy from celebrated French directing duo Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano (The Intouchables) invites us to an opulent château to attend a très extravagant wedding, where the groom is an obnoxious tyrant, the band is at war with the organizers, and the chief planner is looking for the exit.

Max (Jean-Pierre Bacri) is a battle-weary veteran of the wedding-planning racket. His latest — and last — gig is a hell of a fête, involving stuffy period costumes for the caterers, a vain, hyper sensitive singer who thinks he’s a Gallic James Brown, and a morose, micromanaging groom determined to make Max’s night as miserable as possible. But what makes the affair too bitter to endure is that Max’s colleague and ostensible girlfriend, Joisette (Suzanne Clément; Mommy, Laurence Anyways), seems to have written him off, coolly going about her professional duties while openly flirting with a much younger server. It’s going to be a very long night… especially once the groom’s aerial serenade gets underway.

An ensemble work brimming with offbeat, lovable characters, and hilarious set pieces, C’est la vie! is a fiendishly smart, sprawling comedy as only the French do it. You will be laughing all the way down the aisle.